[Feedback - Build 45480] Hunter Class Talents + Beast Mastery

I guess we’ll find out on Tuesday what it actually means

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In short, this. As I suspected.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/en/wow/t/feedback-hunters/1279513/67

The MM changes sounds cool, just really whish they would give aimed shot on the move QQ.

I diselike the dire beast focus in the tree, i think its a cool option for people that like the playstyle but i prefer the feeling of me and my animal companion fighting not me and my zoo. Just hope there will be viable builds they play less with the zoo theme.

The ranger talent in survival sounds intressting, but i have no idea how it will play out. Please dont give me false hope for old survival blizz. Im not ready to get hurt again.

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Aww rip. There goes my dreams

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Presumably, I would say that they’re doing this to distinguish between BM and SV. As apparently, SV is now the “beast companion guy”.

See my previous reply, above yours. They have no intentions of making a RSV subspec within SV.

Ye i saw </3. My biggest issue with survival taking BMs place as the animal companion specc is that its thematicly all over the place. I dont feel like anything when playing it. I wanted melee hunter for such a long time but ever since we got it i have never been able to get in to it.

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Reserving Total Judgment until I see the actual tree but…
There are the buffs to Fury of the Eagle ABSOLUTELY NO ONE WAS ASKING FOR.
Holy hell. Give us an actual useable ability. Lacerate or Caltrops would be such a God send over discount fists of fury.
Serpent Sting is now a passive so now we really are basically a 3 button rotation. We will probably lose the application damage too so theres a subtle dps loss if thats true.
Also spamming KC less because we get more focus per cast is a win HOWEVER, it degrades the value of pet damage talent points and KC damage talents because there will be less KC overall now. Nice.

Someone reiterate that into the Alpha feedback for me please.

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Looking at what was said in the post, regarding class changes and BM.

The next build to alpha will have some pretty substantial changes for the hunter talent trees. Many talent nodes have had their position shuffled around, as well as connections, so this won’t be an exact list of what specific talent node moved to what new position and what it connects to.

Will be interesting to see how they re-structure the class tree.

Baseline Changes:

  • Mend Pet has been bumped up from 35% of Pet’s HP over its duration, to 50% of pet’s HP.

Sure, why not.

Class Tree:

  • The placeholder Agility % node has been replaced with an Avoidance node.

Okay. Again, will depend on placement with the new layout/structure. Probably won’t be enough though as Avoidance just helps with AoE damage taken.

  • Improved Exhilaration (the pet healing) is now part of the baseline Exhilaration ability. This has been replaced with Rejuvenating Winds.

Good change. Still far from enough though, considering how bad hunter survivability is in e.g. content.

  • Viper’s Venom in the choice node after Serpent Sting has been replaced with Hydra’s Bite.

Interesting for sure. Might make it worth going for Serpent Sting + Hydra’s Bite. Will depend on tuning ofc.

  • Binding Shackles is planned to work with any combination of Scatter Shot, Explosive Trap, Binding Shot, and Intimidation. This should make sense with the new tree layout.

Better than before, but still very situational. And still fairly worthless in a group-based PvE setting. At least in terms of our own survivability.

Beast Mastery

  • Dire Pack has been redesigned. Every X Dire Beasts summoned now resets the cooldown of Kill Command, and reduces the cooldown and Focus Cost of Kill Command for a duration.
  • New talent added that increases the duration and damage of any Dire Beast summon.

Okay. Wonder what will be done with Dire Command. That talent at 3 ranks, while it will have some nice synergy with these, those 3 points should ideally be reduced by at least 1.

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Regarding issues with hunter survivability

Taking another look at the changes they announced just the other day. Specifically, what they said about replacing Improved Exhilaration with Rejuvenating Wind(Endurance Conduit from SL).

  • Improved Exhilaration (the pet healing) is now part of the baseline Exhilaration ability. This has been replaced with Rejuvenating Wind.

Looking at the tooltip of that conduit, it reads like this:


Rejuvenating Wind
Exhilaration heals you for an additional 10.0% of your maximum health over 8 sec.


Accounting for my own hunter, based on the average 5min simulation, with optimal play, I’d spend around 18 Focus/sec. With that in mind, based on that I’ve also taken the talent Natural Mending(2/2) which reduces the remaining cooldown of Exhilaration by 1 sec for every 12 Focus I spend, I would reduce the remaining CD of Exhil by an additional 1.5 sec, on top of the regular cooldown count. In short, this equates to how the cooldown of Exhil is reduced by a total of 2.5sec for every second that passes.

With a base CD of 2min for Exhilaration, this would mean that it will be back off CD after about 48 seconds, again with optimal usage/Focus spending. In reality, it will probably be closer to every 55-60sec.

Where am I going with this?

Well. What if they add this talent – Rejuvenating Wind, but they also add a small damage reduction effect to it, let’s say 15-20% DR, for the duration of the Rejuvenating Wind(8 sec)?

The tooltip of the talent could read:

Rejuvenating Wind
Exhilaration heals you for an additional 5/10% of your maximum health over 8 sec.

While you’re under the effect of Rejuvenating Wind, you also take 10/20% less damage.

This would basically provide us with a discount Barkskin, every minute or so, assuming that we’ve also talented into Natural Mending 2/2. If we haven’t, it would instead be every 2min, which was the base duration of Exhilaration.


I can’t post this feedback on the alpha forums as I don’t have access, but if this sounds decent enough, feel free to forward this post, or it’s contents.

Heck, I would even suggest that they make it into a choice node.

Choice node, pick one of the following talents

[Rejuvenating Wind] - Exhilaration heals you for an additional 20% of your maximum health over 8 sec.

While you’re under the effect of Rejuvenating Wind you also take 20% less damage.

[Deterrence] - Instant - 10 sec duration - 2.5 min cooldown
Reduces all damage taken by 40% for 10 sec.

I don’t know how it really will pan out and I know its alpha but feeling a little

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We need to keep in mind some of these changes, such as the binding shackle change affects more than just a M+ or raid. Many pvp and that is a decent change towards that.

I could also see it working in M+ on packs if tuned correctly.

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I mean neat theorycrafting for sure but I just have one issue with it. I don’t like that we’d have to use our Healing ability (retroactive healing that should be used after taking damage) as a preemptive damage reduction spell.

It would feel bad however you use it. Either you use it for DR and “waste” the healing or you use it to heal some damage you’ve taken but potentially waste the DR. I’d rather they just bring back some old hunter love with Deterrence and make it a DR ability. Don’t think it’s too much to ask for one heal, one DR ability and then the turtle as a immunity ability. Then we’d be in a much better spot.

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Yep, I know. That’s why I made a point of mentioning it in the context of a group-based PvE setting. Not saying that it would have no use at all there, just more situational than not.

Well, who says that the heal should only be used retroactively? I frequently use Exhil during mythic progression to make sure I’m topped off before windows of large amounts of incoming damage.

As it looks so far, we will gain more than twice the benefit from Natural Mending, compared to what it’s like on live right now(where for BM it requires 30 Focus spent for 1 sec CDR, and for MM/SV it’s every 20 Focus spent). Again, in the new talent tree, it’s a 2 rank talent that says “every 25/12 Focus spent = 1 sec CDR”. Even as a base improvement, that’s a fairly significant one.

Obviously it wouldn’t completely negate any potential scenario where you’d have to make a choice, but even so, again, compared to what it’s like now in SL, it would be a heck of an improvement.

Yeah but I mean, you actually use it for retroactively healing damage taken before then. Just because your reason to wanting to heal that damage before incoming damage does not change that the spell was used retroactively, as in after the damage was taken. You use it proactively to prevent a possible death sure. But that would always be the reason for the use of a heal.

What I am saying is not that it’s a bad idea. I am just saying I would like the DR to be connected to it’s own ability or something else. Because it will feel bad to not have the DR when you need it because you had to use it as a heal 30 seconds ago. It would not give us more survivability but just 2 ways (reactive or proactive) to use the same ability. One could argue that it would be a nightmare to balance. Is 20% DR better or worse than 30% of your max hp? (the incoming damage would have to be 150% of your max HP for the 20% DR to be worth more healthpoints than the 30% heal so the DR ability would Only be the better choice if the attack would be a killing blow when you are at max HP).

I am just saying, it’s not like we have an abundant amount of buttons and we have very few defensives so adding one more that is for DR only would be the best option, IMO.

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That would be ideal, sure. Though, what ability would that be? I’ve seen suggestions to attach such a DR to abilities like Feign Death or Disengage, or to return the other SL conduit – Marksman’s Advantage, to attach it to Hunter’s Mark via a talent choice.

I don’t want those effects to return. I really don’t!

I would personally prefer if it was its own ability. I prefer it when you use the ability for what its there for, not to trigger some secondary effect. If it were up to me I’d add back deterrence and make it a 20% low cd or 40% longer cd like astral shift for shaman.

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Agreed. Though, I have my doubts that they would actually give us another ability like this. But again, that would be the ideal solution yes.

Edit:

How about this…?

Choice node, pick one of the following talents

[Rejuvenating Wind] - Exhilaration heals you for an additional 20% of your maximum health over 8 sec.

While you’re under the effect of Rejuvenating Wind you also take 20% less damage.

[Deterrence] - Instant - 10 sec duration - 2.5 min cooldown
Reduces all damage taken by 40% for 10 sec.

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I really like this suggestion! It looks very solid.

We get added survivability in the form of a DR ability with good DR on a longer CD. Just as astral shift or many others.
Or we get to make another defensive ability we have become stronger, with added healing.

This is especially good since one is a passive that strengthens our heal. Easy to use and doesn’t become one more button to use while still increasing survivability. And the other one is a strong active ability that can be very strong if used correctly.

Big agree, now we just need to convince Blizzard to add it :wink:

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Hmm, to start with, we need to make it appear in a topic where it’s more likely to be seen(hunter alpha topic)…

Note that the effect of Rejuvenating Wind doesn’t have to be set to a 10% HoT. If 15, or even 20% is required to make it a worthy choice vs Deterrence, then by all means.

Yeah agree. But that comes down to tuning. It’s a whole other mess and done later in beta I guess. But yes, this needs to be brought up on the Alpha hunter thread IMO.
I am just happy that a lot of the issues I have actually have been brought up in the alpha thread.

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